Israel faced a stunning new challenge from its age-old Islamic enemies in last summer’s Gaza war, one that, if successful, would have led to unspeakable human carnage.

It’s the same challenge an IDF officer and author of a new book says America will soon be facing and is not nearly as prepared to repel.

Hamas’ attack strategy in July 2014 went beyond the standard rocket barrage on Israeli cities. A brazen plan to send hundreds of heavily armed terrorists through tunnels in Gaza up into Israel’s population centers almost succeeded, says Capt. Dan Gordon, veteran of six wars and member of the Israeli Defense Forces’ advanced sniper team.

“I’ve been in six Middle Eastern wars, including the one last summer in Israel,” says Gordon, who has a home in Arizona, where, when he’s not fighting wars, he works as a screenwriter for Hollywood productions and recently completed a new book, “Day of the Dead Book One: Gaza.”

He has an upcoming sequel “Day of the Dead Book Two: America.”

In that sequel, he presents a chilling message for America that he hopes will be taken as more than a mere work of fiction.

‘Like zombies coming up out of the ground’

“That war (in Gaza) ushered in something that was really the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen in my life, and that is terrorist attack tunnels that went underneath the recognized 1948 borders of Israel from Gaza…and all of a sudden it was like Night of the Living Dead,” he said in a recent Fox News interview. “Your lawn opens up, and like zombies coming up out of the ground, a dozen terrorists armed with RPGs, machine guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hand-grenades, tranquilizer shots and handcuffs, meant to take women and children hostage, kill and maim as many as possible and then drag others back into Gaza as hostages.”

The plot was foiled by alert Israeli military watchmen who monitor the border 24/7 with the help of drones and other aerial assets.

Gordon told WND the Middle East often serves as a “research and development lab” for terrorist innovations. What starts there often spreads to the rest of the world.

Sure enough, a little online research will turn up articles about the “tunnel warfare” strategy now being deployed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and various Islamist groups in North Africa.

The proliferation of tunnel warfare in the Middle East is discussed at length in a recent article at DefenseOne.com.

Daniel Rubenstein’s article for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs describes in depth the Hamas plot to bring more than 200 terrorists up from Gaza tunnels into Israeli cities and how dangerously close they came to pulling it off.

But the most vulnerable country to tunnel attacks is not Israel, Gordon says. It is the United States.

ISIS operatives are likely already inside America, but nobody knows how many, where, or in what capacity.

“Did they come in from tunnels? I doubt it, because they don’t need to, our border is so porous, and they could easily come across the southern border as thousands of people do every day,” Gordon said. “And they could have Western passports from a country which requires no visa. My guess is there are ISIS fighters in the country doing advance scouting, studying all the preliminary things a professional terror attack takes into account, because a professional terrorist attack takes months to set up.”

Gordon gets inside the mind of a terrorist like no other author since Tom Clancy.

“You surveil the target, you look for ingress and egress routes, you study response times, you look at what you plan to do after the first attack,” he said. “Do you set off a bomb and then detonate another after the first responders arrive? Or, do you launch a second attack simultaneously on another side of town? So my guess is there is advance scouts planning all this as we speak.”

But when it comes time to launch the big attack, that’s when the tunnels come into play.

ISIS’s job will be made easier by the fact that an established drug-smuggling tunnel system into the U.S. from Mexico already exists.

“ISIS has billions of dollars. They’re the richest terror organization in the history of the world. They don’t’ have to dig a tunnel they just have to rent one,” Gordon told WND. “Money is a language the drug cartels understand. There are tunnels that go from Tijuana, Mexico, into San Diego. We have found other tunnels that go from Mexico into southern Arizona, and from Mexico into portions of El Paso, Texas, and one has to assume there are tunnels we don’t know about.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/u-s-vulnerable-to-most-terrifying-isis-tactic/#fQpUSfDRoSOFmdFj.99

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China-linked hackers appear to have gained access to sensitive background information submitted by U.S. intelligence and military personnel for security clearances that could potentially expose them to blackmail, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

In a report citing several U.S. officials, the news agency said data on nearly all of the millions of U.S. security-clearance holders, including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and military special operations personnel, were potentially exposed in the attack on the Office of Personnel Management.

It said more than 2.9 million people had been investigated for a security clearance as of October 2014.

The OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but a senior U.S. official confirmed that U.S. investigators had discovered a separate attack on the OPM that targeted sensitive information about government employees similar to a hacking incident revealed last week.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, could not confirm that the information obtained was from U.S. intelligence and military personnel but did say it was "a different set of OPM systems and data" to that of the hack disclosed last week and did involve background data and security clearances.

A source familiar with the investigation said U.S. investigators suspected a similar Chinese link to the other hacking incident.

Earlier on Friday, the White House said it could not confirm another AP report that as many as 14 million current and former U.S. government employees had their personal information exposed to hackers in the other OPM breach.

The government said last week that the records of up to 4 million people had been compromised, making it one of the biggest known attacks on U.S. federal networks. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the investigation was continuing into this breach.

SENSITIVE DATA

The AP report said a form authorities believed to have been accessed in the breach involving the intelligence and military personnel, Standard Form 86, required applicants to fill out deeply personal information about mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies.

The form required the listing of contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion, the report said. The form also required the applicant's Social Security number and that of their cohabitant.

Later on Friday, without referring to the AP report, the Obama administration said it had ordered federal agencies to take extra steps to protect U.S. government computer systems.

“Recent events underscore the need to accelerate the Administration’s cyber strategy and confront aggressive, persistent malicious actors that continue to target our nation’s cyber infrastructure,” the White House said in a statement outlining its security measures.

Friday's reports came as President Barack Obama's top national security adviser, Susan Rice, met with a top Chinese military officer, General Fan Changlong, at the White House and stressed the need for the United States and China to narrow disagreements, including on cyber security.

China, which is also at odds with the United States over Beijing's increasingly assertive pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea, has rejected as irresponsible any allegations that it was behind the hacking.

The cyber attacks and tensions over the South China Sea threaten to overshadow broader annual U.S.-China talks covering economic and strategic ties between the word's two biggest economies from June 22-24.

U.S. government officials and cyber analysts say Chinese hackers are using high-tech tactics to build massive databases that could be used for traditional espionage, such as recruiting spies, or gaining access to secure data on other networks.

THIS month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a Muslim man was charged with plotting to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State’s efforts to radicalize American Muslims, which began just after the survey ended, may have increased threat perceptions somewhat, but not by much, as we found in follow-up interviews over the past year with counterterrorism specialists at 19 law enforcement agencies. These officers, selected from urban and rural areas around the country, said that radicalization from the Middle East was a concern, but not as dangerous as radicalization among right-wing extremists.

An officer from a large metropolitan area said that “militias, neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens” are the biggest threat we face in regard to extremism. One officer explained that he ranked the right-wing threat higher because “it is an emerging threat that we don’t have as good of a grip on, even with our intelligence unit, as we do with the Al Shabab/Al Qaeda issue, which we have been dealing with for some time.” An officer on the West Coast explained that the “sovereign citizen” anti-government threat has “really taken off,” whereas terrorism by American Muslim is something “we just haven’t experienced yet.”

Last year, for example, a man who identified with the sovereign citizen movement — which claims not to recognize the authority of federal or local government — attacked a courthouse in Forsyth County, Ga., firing an assault rifle at police officers and trying to cover his approach with tear gas and smoke grenades. The suspect was killed by the police, who returned fire. In Nevada, anti-government militants reportedly walked up to and shot two police officers at a restaurant, then placed a “Don’t tread on me” flag on their bodies. An anti-government extremist in Pennsylvania was arrested on suspicion of shooting two state troopers, killing one of them, before leading authorities on a 48-day manhunt. A right-wing militant in Texas declared a “revolution” and was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rob an armored car in order to buy weapons and explosives and attack law enforcement. These individuals on the fringes of right-wing politics increasingly worry law enforcement officials.

The latest disturbing video from ISIS shows what the Islamist group touts as the next generation of jihadist killers, pint-sized terror trainees who appear to be as young as 5 participating in drills and reciting verses from the Koran.

The 9-minute video released Monday shows about 70 camouflage-clad kids, who are reportedly the children of foreign fighters who have flocked to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamist army. An instructor states in Arabic that most of the children are in the second phase of training and that they represent the "next generation" of ISIS. The video illustrates the charge in a UN Human Rights Council report last year that determined that Islamic State “has established training camps to recruit children into armed roles under the guise of education.”

“At the camps, the children recruited received weapons training and religious education,” the report stated. “The existence of such camps seems to indicate that ISIS systematically provides weapons training for children.

"Subsequently, they were deployed in active combat during military operations, including suicide-bombing missions," it stated.

In the video, the children wear ISIS' trademark black headbands and are seen answering religious questions and quoting the Koran against a soundtrack of Arabic music. The clip provides a disturbing snapshot into how the extremist group is taking young innocent children and turning them into their own depraved version of Nazi Germany’s Hitler youth, experts said.

“The existence of such camps seems to indicate that ISIS systematically provides weapons training for children."

ISIS has released a new propaganda video showing what appears to be Kurdish Peshmerga fighters paraded down Iraqi streets in cages.

The video features a man saying the Peshmerga soldiers were captured by ISIS.

CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video. But it shows at least 21 men in orange outfits hauled in the cages atop the beds of pickup trucks.

A man with a microphone bearing the ISIS logo interviews some of the captives, who say they are Peshmerga soldiers. Most of those interviewed say they are from Kirkuk. The prisoners, under duress, call on their fellow Peshmerga soldiers to give up their fight against ISIS.

The video also features superimposed bios for each prisoner. One captive is described as an officer for the Iraqi army.

The heavily edited footage also includes flashing clips of the recent beheadings of Christian Egyptians in Libya.

It's not clear what happened to those in the video. The last scene shows them alive.

But a man in the video gives an ominous warning.

"We say to the Peshmerga: Leave your jobs, or your fate will be like these, either the cage, or under the ground," he says in Kurdish.

The Peshmerga are armed forces protecting Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq. The fighters opposed Saddam Hussein's regime and supported the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

A spokesman for the Armed Forces General Command announced the strikes on state radio Monday, marking the first time Cairo has publicly acknowledged taking military action in neighboring Libya, where extremist groups seen as a threat to both countries have taken root in recent years. The statement said the warplanes targeted weapons caches and training camps before returning safely. It said the strikes were "to avenge the bloodshed and to seek retribution from the killers."

"Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield that protects them," it said.

The video released online showed the Egyptian victims, poor men from Egypt's rural areas who had traveled to Libya looking for work, kneeling before Islamic State executioners. In Egypt, which by some estimates is about 10 percent Christian, the video sent shockwaves through both Muslim and Christian communities. El-Sisi, the U.S.-trained, former military leader who in a landmark New Year's day address called on the Arab world to reject radical terror, and then took the unprecedented step of attending services at a Christian church, told his nation the deaths would be avenged.

"These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination" said el-Sissi, who also banned all travel to Libya by Egyptian citizens. "Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals."

On Monday, el-Sissi visited the main Coptic Cathedral of St. Mark in Cairo to offer his condolences on the Egyptians killed in Libya, according to state TV.

Egypt is already battling a burgeoning Islamist insurgency centered in the strategic Sinai Peninsula, where militants have recently declared their allegiance to ISIS and rely heavily on arms smuggled across the porous desert border between Egypt and Libya.

The strikes also come just a month before Egypt is scheduled to host a major donor's conference at a Sinai resort to attract foreign investment needed to revive the economy after more than four years of turmoil.

The Egyptian government had previously declared a seven-day period of mourning and President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi addressed the nation late Sunday night, saying that his government reserved the right to seek retaliation for the killings.

"These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination" said el-Sissi, who also banned all travel to Libya by Egyptian citizens. "Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals."

Libya's air force commander, Saqr al-Joroushi, told Egyptian state TV that the airstrikes were coordinated with the Libyan side and that they killed about 50 militants. Libya's air force also announced it had launched strikes in the eastern city of Darna, which was taken over by an ISIS affiliate last year. The announcement, on the Facebook page of the Air Force Chief of Staff, did not provide further details. Two Libyan security officials told the Associated Press civilians, including three children and two women, were killed in the strikes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The video was released late Sunday by militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State group. The militants had been holding 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December and January. The killings raise the possibility that the extremist group -- which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq in a self-declared caliphate -- has established a direct affiliate less than 500 miles from the southern tip of Italy, Libya's former colonial master. One of the militants in the video makes direct reference to that possibility, saying the group now plans to "conquer Rome."

In Washington, the White House released a statement calling the beheadings "despicable" and "cowardly", but made no mention of the victims' religion, referring to them only as "Egyptian citizens" or "innocents." White House press secretary Josh Earnest added in the statement that the terror group's "barbarity knows no bounds."

Also Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry called Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. He offered his condolences on behalf of the American people and strongly condemned the killings. Kerry and the foreign minister agreed to keep in close touch as Egyptians deliberated on a response, according to a release from the State Department.

The U.N. Security Council meanwhile strongly condemned what it called "the heinous and cowardly apparent murder in Libya of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by an affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," using another name for the terror group.

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, also condemned the mass killing, calling it an "ugly crime."

"The United Arab Emirates is devoting all its resources to support the efforts of Egypt to eradicate terrorism and the violence directed against its citizens," he said.

Sheikh Abdullah added that the killing highlights the need to help the Libyan government "extend its sovereign authority over all of Libya's territory."

The oil-rich Emirates, along with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, has given billions of dollars in aid to Egypt since el-Sissi, who was then military chief, overthrew Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 amid massive protests against his yearlong rule.

Egypt has since waged a sweeping crackdown against Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group, which it has officially branded a terrorist organization. El-Sissi has insisted the crackdown in Egypt, as well as support for the government in Libya, is part of a larger war on terror.

Libya in recent months has seen the worst unrest since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, which will complicate any efforts to combat the country's many Islamic extremist groups.

The internationally recognized government has been confined to the country's far east since Islamist-allied militias seized the capital Tripoli last year, and Islamist politicians have reconstituted a previous government and parliament.

Egypt has strongly backed the internationally recognized government, and U.S. officials have said both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have taken part in a series of mysterious airstrikes targeting Islamist-allied forces.

Cairo (CNN)Two Al Jazeera journalists who'd been imprisoned in Egypt for more than a year were granted bail Thursday, with a court telling them they can await retrial away from jail in a case that has outraged journalists and activists around the globe.

An Egyptian court Thursday ordered journalists Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed freed ahead of their retrial on charges that they supported the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

However, the men were still in custody Thursday night, and with government offices closed on Fridays for weekly prayers, their release might not come until Saturday.

News of their pending release comes less than two weeks after Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Greste, a colleague who was convicted with them, was released and deported to his native Australia.

Bail for Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian citizen and former CNN producer, was set at 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($32,750). Mohamed, an Egyptian citizen, is not required to pay but is barred from leaving the country ahead of the retrial.

Fahmy's family paid the bail Thursday. The case is scheduled to resume on February 23.

Fahmy, who says he recently surrendered his Egyptian citizenship under coercion to facilitate his ultimate release, addressed the court Thursday, reasserting his innocence and brandishing an Egyptian flag.

Al Jazeera applauded the two journalists' bail but called for their full exoneration.

Washington (CNN)The top United States commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan told Congress he has provided his chain of command with options for the drawdown of troops this year that would give both U.S. and Afghan leaders flexibility as the security situation evolves on the ground.

While the United States has close to 10,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan following the end of combat operations at the beginning of the year, the Obama administration has already announced plans to draw that number down to 5,500 by the end of this year.

Gen. John Campbell told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday his recommendations deal with both the "glide slope" and "locations" for where to make withdrawals as the summer fighting season in Afghanistan gets underway.

"I have provided options on adjusting our force posture through my chain of command," Campbell said, adding that he "absolutely" favored the options without elaborating on their specificity.

McCaul, speaking on CNN's The Lead, declined to confirm a report from the Daily Beast that the White House had intelligence on U.S. citizens held by ISIS but acted too late to save them.

But he said there were similar allegations with the death of American journalist James Foley at the hands of ISIS fighters.

"[The accusations are] that we are waiting too long to send in these rescue missions, and that for whatever reason this is getting bottle-necked up in the White House, [which is] having a hard time making any decision," the Republican said.

"I think time is of the essence in these situations to save these hostages, and it's very, very unfortunate what happened to [ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller]. I'm concerned they're not doing enough not only to save these hostages but to win this war," McCaul sais. "All we're seeing is a policy of containment."

(CNN)Marathon peace talks aimed at ending the bloody crisis in eastern Ukraine concluded Thursday in a breakthrough: A ceasefire that's due to start Sunday and an agreement for both sides to pull back heavy weapons.

If the ceasefire holds -- which is far from certain -- it could end a 10-month conflict that has claimed more than 5,000 lives, many of them civilians, and plunged East-West relations to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

"We had just two options: bad, and worse. So we decided at this particular period of time to get the bad option. Probably this option will save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, and I hope this option will save lives of Ukrainian civilians, of innocent people, who are under a constant shelling of Russian-led terrorists," Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said.

"It's better to have this new deal rather than not to have (it). But we do not trust any words or any papers. We are to trust only actions and deeds," he said.

The White House issued a statement with a tone of guarded optimism. "The United States welcomes the agreement reached today in Minsk. ..." it said. "The agreement represents a potentially significant step toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict and the restoration of Ukraine's sovereignty."

The bomber, wearing a hijab, detonated her suicide vest in the midst of shoppers at a weekly market in the town of Biu around 3 p.m. at the peak of business, witnesses said.

"We have evacuated eight bodies, including that of the bomber, to the hospital along with 20 people injured in the attack," Bukar Maina, a trader at the market, said.

A nurse at the Biu General Hospital confirmed the number of dead.

No claim of responsibility was immediately made, but the Islamist militant group Boko Haram has terrorized northern Nigeria regularly since 2009, attacking police, schools, churches and civilians, as well as bombing government buildings.

The Islamist group has said its aim is to impose a stricter form of Sharia, or Islamic law, across Nigeria, which is split between a majority Muslim north and a mostly Christian south.

President Obama formally asked Congress on Wednesday to authorize a three-year military campaign against the Islamic State that would avoid a large-scale invasion and occupation. The offensive could include limited ground operations to hunt down enemy leaders or rescue American personnel from the Sunni militants.

A proposal sent by the White House to Capitol Hill on Wednesday would formally give the president the power to continue the airstrikes he has been conducting since last fall against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as well as “associated persons or forces.” The measure would set limits that were never imposed during the wars of the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq by expiring in three years and withholding permission for “enduring offensive ground combat operations.”

“I do not believe America’s interests are served by endless war or by remaining on a perpetual war footing,” Mr. Obama said in a televised statement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Wednesday afternoon. He added that the three-year time frame was not a timetable announcing how long the mission would last. “What it is saying is that Congress should revisit the issue at the beginning of the next president’s term.”

But in a letter to Congress accompanying the proposal and in his televised comments, Mr. Obama, who has said there would be no boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, envisioned limited ground combat operations “such as rescue operations” or the use of “Special Operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.”

He also said the legislation would allow the use of ground forces for intelligence gathering, target spotting and planning assistance to ground troops of allies like Iraq.

“If we had actionable intelligence about ISIL leaders and our partners didn’t have the capacity to get there, I would be prepared to order our special forces to take action because I will not allow these terrorist to have a safe haven,” Mr. Obama said in his statement.

The widow of Chris Kyle, the protagonist in the top-selling book and hit movie "American Sniper," testified Wednesday that she "could tell something was up" the day her husband and a friend were shot to death at a rifle range.

Taking the stand in the Texas murder trial of Eddie Ray Routh, Taya Kyle recounted the last conversation with her husband, on the phone February 2, 2013.

"I said are you OK?" she said. "He said 'yep.' And that's not common for him. I could tell something was up and he was just quiet ..."

On that day, Kyle took friend Chad Littlefield and Routh, a troubled veteran he was trying to help, to a firing range at Rough Creek Lodge, about 90 miles southwest of Dallas. Taya Kyle said her husband sounded irritated.

"Normally, going out there, especially a place like Rough Creek -- usually it's beautiful. He feels really good about helping somebody, he's making their day and he knows it," she testified. "Earlier, he thought that guy sounded really excited to go, so he thought he was doing a good thing."

She said their last conversation "was very short, and it wasn't short like, 'Hey, you are interrupting a good time.' It was short like, 'I wish I could say more but I'm not going to because there were people around.' "

Later she texted and he didn't reply, and she became worried, she testified.

Prosecutors warned they would be showing graphic photos of Kyle's and Littlefield's bodies. Taya Kyle remained in the courtroom.

Routh is charged with murder in the killings of Kyle and Littlefield.

In opening statements, defense lawyer Ed Moore said Routh killed the two men because he suffered "a psychosis so severe that at that point in time he did not know what he was doing was wrong. ... He thought in his mind at that moment in time it was either him or them."

But Erath County District Attorney Alan Nash told the jury that Routh told investigators he used drugs and drank whiskey that morning. He admitted that he killed the two men and said he "knew what he was doing was wrong," the prosecutor said.

The trial comes just weeks after the release of the film about Kyle, a former Navy SEAL who claimed to be the deadliest sniper in U.S. history with 160 confirmed kills in Iraq. The film has grossed more than $280 million, the most ever for a war movie, and the autobiography by the same name spent weeks on best-seller lists.

Minsk, Belarus (CNN) Four key leaders converged on Belarus' capital Wednesday with one official mission: bringing peace to Ukraine.

Whether they can achieve that is unsure, considering the violence, bitter divisions and failed negotiations. Still, the fact that French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin made the trip to Minsk to talk peace is notable.

The stakes are high. Not only has war raged for months in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels angry about political upheaval in Kiev have declared their independence, but it's getting worse, threatening not only the lives of more civilians, but the stability of the region.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday before his arrival in Minsk, Poroshenko called the summit "the most important one so far I have had as a President," Ukraine's state-run Ukrinform news agency reported.

The President said he and Ukraine's lawmakers were ready to introduce martial law across the country if "further irresponsible actions" lead to more escalation of the conflict.

"It will depend on the results of the summit whether we stop the aggressor through diplomatic means or go to a totally different regime," he is quoted as saying.

Video showed Denis Pushilin of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Vladislav Deinego of the Luhansk People's Republic at the talks, speaking with reporters in Minsk on Tuesday night, putting to rest earlier doubts about their attendance.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also attended the preliminary meeting.

That set the stage for the main event involving Hollande, Merkel, Poroshenko and Putin that began Wednesday night in Belarus' Palace of Independence.

Was it a dispute over a parking space or something more sinister that prompted the shooting death of three students in an apartment near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus?

Police said "an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking" might have been a factor in the shootings Tuesday evening but said they weren't dismissing the possibility of a hate crime.

The victims -- a newlywed couple and the bride's younger sister -- were shot in the head, sources told CNN affiliate WRAL.

Their families have said they believe the shootings were motivated by hate, and the suspect had threatened the three before, said family spokeswoman Linda Sarsour. The nature of the previous threats was unclear.

All three of the victims, Deah Barakat, 23, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and Razan Abu-Salha, 19, were Muslim. And given their religion and comments the alleged shooter apparently left on a Facebook page, many social media users wondered what role the victims' faith may have played.

The 46-year-old suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, has been charged with murder.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, his wife said she was "shocked" by the killings and offered condolences to the victims' families.

"This incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims' faith, but in fact was related to the longstanding parking disputes that my husband had with the neighbors," Karen Hicks said.

Rob Maitland, her attorney, said the shooting "highlights the importance of access to mental health care services."

He declined to provide any details about the suspect's mental health history, but said, "obviously it's not within the range of normal behavior for someone to shoot three people over parking issues."

The father of the female victims, however, told a local newspaper that he was sure that wasn't true.

"It was execution style, a bullet in every head," the women's father, Mohammad Abu-Salha, told the News & Observer in Raleigh. "This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far."

Suzanne Barakat, Deah's older sister, also told reporters her family wants investigators to treat the case as a hate crime.

"We are still in a state of shock and will never be able to make sense of this horrendous tragedy," she said. "We ask that the authorities investigate these senseless and heinous murders as a hate crime."

Military family activist Liz Snell never thought it would happen to her group: Apparent ISIS sympathizers hacked her group's Twitter account and posted threats against a half dozen or so members.

The threats came just a month after Snell told CNN she wouldn't allow the ISIS-related hack of the U.S. military's Central Command Twitter account to deter her fight to help military spouses in distress.

On Tuesday, the ISIS-connected threats became personal, against her group, Military Spouses of Strength.

"I never thought we would be in this position," Snell said Tuesday after the group's Twitter account was hacked by a group calling itself the CyberCaliphate, which partly refers to ISIS' efforts.

"Initially, I felt scared. I think I would be lying if I didn't, if I said otherwise," Snell said. "I feel a sense of responsibility to our members and followers. Military Spouses of Strength was formed for military spouses to feel that they have a safe place."

For now, the group's Twitter page is indefinitely shut down at Snell's direction, and she's ensuring everyone in her group "is being safe as possible."

Her group promotes the mental well-being of spouses whose partners are U.S. military personnel deployed to the battlefield, often repeatedly.

(CNN)Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker and ISIS hostage whose death was confirmed by her family this week, might have been paired with a male ISIS fighter during her captivity, U.S. intelligence and government officials said Wednesday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, cited unspecified intelligence gleaned about the case. A U.S. intelligence official said it was unclear whether Mueller was coerced, sold or forced into the pairing.

Intelligence suggests Mueller may have been given to an ISIS fighter as a sort of bride, one U.S. government official said.

Mueller's parents announced Tuesday that it had received confirmation that their daughter -- who was captured in northern Syria in 2013 -- had died.

ISIS sent the family a private message over the weekend with information about her death, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said Tuesday.

The message included photos. One picture showed her wrapped in a burial shroud, but there was enough showing for the family and forensics examiners to identify her, a U.S. official briefed on the matter told CNN.

The information did not confirm how Mueller died, a law enforcement source familiar with the case said on condition of anonymity.

On Friday, ISIS said that Mueller, 26, of Arizona, had been killed in a building hit during a Jordanian airstrike on Raqqa, the militants' de facto capital in Syria. At the time, ISIS offered no proof to back up its claim, other than an image of a building in rubble.

The photos in the private weekend message showed bruises on the face, The New York Times reported, but it was unclear whether her injuries were consistent with being killed in the rubble of a flattened building, as ISIS claimed.

As conflicts and civil wars rage across the Middle East and North Africa, a shadowy covert cell operating under the Iranian government is fueling the bloodshed.

Unit 190, a secret arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force made up of about two-dozen employees, has for years smuggled arms to these conflict zones.

After an extensive investigation tracing the land, air and sea routes used by the Quds Force to move weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas and now the Houthis in Yemen, Fox News has also learned from western intelligence sources the name of the Iranian man who is a key player in Unit 190: Behnam Shahariyari, born in 1968 in Ardabil, northwest Iran.

“Very often arms and explosives were placed in trucks underneath legal cargo in order to hide them,” said Michael Eisenstadt, director of Military and Security Studies programs for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In May 2007, when Turkey intercepted containers filled with 122mm mortar shells and explosives destined for Hezbollah via Syria in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1747, the bill of lading had Shahariyari's signature on it.